Daily Tech and Gadget

The iPad offers a great web browsing experience — maybe the best on any device (assuming you don’t want to go to a site that uses Flash). But it could still be better. For example, it would be nice to have actual tabs, rather than the bogus window system the iPad uses. That system makes sense on the iPhone where there isn’t much screen real estate, but there’s plenty on the iPad

Google Chrome’s application shortcuts turn any web site into a separate item on your Windows 7 taskbar, but unfortunately many sites have low-res icons that make your taskbar ugly. Here’s the simple trick to make your taskbar beautiful again. More » Google Chrome – Windows 7 – Taskbar – Windows – Microsoft Windows

A couple of weeks ago, Google released a video demonstrating the speed of its Chrome web browser. The video proved that rendering a web page in Chrome is faster than some random (though admittedly very quick) events, such as blasting a potato through a tube. And if you thought that’s quite silly, you’re not alone: Opera thinks so, too. Opera’s answer to the Chrome Speed Test comes in the form of two very silly individuals, who are trying to determine whether loading a web page in Opera is faster than cooking a potato

Lifehacker’s got a quick Q&A with one of Chrome OS ’s UI designers. It’s quite interesting if you want to get into their mindset about how they make a browser into an entire OS. Plus, they’re thinking about touch! [ Lifehacker ] More » Google – Google Chrome – Lifehacker – Clients – WWW

Google’s Chrome browser is proving increasingly popular , while work continues on the Chrome OS project to build a minimal, browser-based interface for netbooks. Lifehacker spoke with Chrome user interface design team developer Glen Murphy – an Aussie now working at Google HQ in California – to discuss the future directions Chrome and Chrome OS will take, why the Chrome Web Store is so important, and the relative important of touch screens and keyboard shortcuts. More » Google Chrome – Google – Chrome Web Store – Clients – WWW

Perhaps the biggest story of day one at Google I/O was the announcement of the Chrome Web Store . This store is meant to highlight web apps while at the same time, providing a way for developers to better monetize them (if they choose to). But the store isn’t ready to be shown off just yet, and so as you might imagine, there are a lot of questions about it. Throughout the course of the day today, Google addressed some of them

Chrome: If you’re a big fan of the bookmarking/web clipping service Instapaper for your read-it-later needs, you’ll be excited to try out Instachrome. It brings simple navigation bar integration of Instapaper to Google Chrome. More » Google Chrome – Browsers – Clients – WWW – Google

A report today on  VentureBeat says that Acer will unveil the first Chrome OS devices in two weeks. While that certainly could happen, don’t expect the OS to be finished, and don’t expect those devices to launch anytime soon. I’ve been digging through the notes for Chromium OS (the open source project Chrome OS will be built on) on Google Code and have found some interesting things.

A new report suggests that next month, computer manufacturer Acer will unveil a slate of devices that run on Chrome OS , the web-centric OS that Google unveiled last year. According to Venturebeat , Taiwan-based Acer intends to launch several Chrome OS devices at the Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan. While it’s uncertain what devices Acer intends to demonstrate with the Google-built OS, they’re almost certain to be netbooks.

Chrome: While the official Delicious bookmarks extension for Chrome is perfectly serviceable it’s quite spartan. Felicious enhances the Delicious experience with in-browser display of tags, existing bookmarks, and notifications. More »

Chrome’s history menu lists your most visited sites and recently closed tabs, which is different from most other browsers. Extension Recent History gives you the history menu you’re used to, listing your most recently viewed pages in a simple drop-down. More »

Google Chrome was the fastest growing web browser for the fifth month in a row in analytics company Net Applications’s April market report , while Microsoft Internet Explorer again lost market share. Chrome’s market share increased from 6.13% to 6.73% — almost a 10% improvement over last month. Internet Explorer saw the most significant loss in this month’s numbers, slipping from 60.65% to 59.95%. Firefox (24.52% – 24.59%) and Apple Safari (4.65 – 4.72%) grew by just 0.07% each

Windows/Mac/Linux: Chrome’s pretty fast, even if you’re not updating with its beta or development channels. Those who dig speed might now consider making the slightly-less-stable jump, though, as Google’s pushing new, faster versions to its Windows, Mac, and Linux beta channels. More »

Chrome only: Google Chrome extension Google Reader Notifier not only shows your current unread count and adds quick access with a popup dialog window, but it’s also the official Google notifier for Reader. More »

Before you do too much browsing around this morning, you might want to hit Chrome’s About menu and check for updates. Chrome’s standard Stable release for Windows has an update out that fixes three security issues labeled as high priority , along with some Java and JavaScript tweaks. [ Google Chrome Releases via Ghacks ] More »